May 20, 2025 | New at BCG
BOSTON—Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Pencil, the leading GenAI-powered marketing platform from The Brandtech Group, today announced a global strategic partnership to accelerate enterprise adoption of AI in marketing.
The collaboration combines BCG’s expertise in AI transformation and organizational change with Pencil’s GenAI technology to help global brands swiftly transition from pilots and trial initiatives to full-scale deployments. The partnership is designed to drive meaningful efficiency gains, cost savings, and performance improvements across marketing functions.
“CMOs are under pressure to prove AI’s value beyond pilot programs,” said Nicolas de Bellefonds, managing director and senior partner, and global lead for AI at BCG. “Through this partnership with Pencil, we’re empowering clients to move from experimentation to adoption at scale—unlocking measurable value and supporting the end-to-end transformation of marketing in the service of performance and brand building.”
“By bringing together BCG’s strategic expertise, Pencil’s AI capabilities, and Brandtech’s technology leadership, we’re making sure that brands don’t just experiment with AI, but scale it in a way that drives real business results,” said Will Hanschell, co-founder and CEO of Pencil.
A Proven GenAI Platform, Ready for Enterprise Scale
Pencil uses AI to generate and optimize creative assets at scale. The platform is AI model agnostic and integrates directly with ad platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube—empowering marketers to create and publish high-performing content more quickly, cost-effectively, and with greater predictive accuracy.
To date, Pencil has produced more than 2 million ads, and its predictive capabilities are powered by $2.65 billion in media spend that has flowed through the platform. For three of the world’s ten largest advertisers, Pencil recently created 235,000 pieces of content, which delivered an average 40% uplift in performance, while reducing cost by 62% and production time by 55%.
“With this partnership, we are turning the potential of GenAI into tangible results,” said Rebecca Sykes, partner and head of emerging technology at The Brandtech Group. “Pencil has already shown how GenAI can deliver performance improvements at a global scale. Together with BCG, we will help brands implement this capability across their entire marketing ecosystem.”
Clear Roles to Drive AI-Powered Marketing Transformation at Scale
Under the partnership, BCG, Pencil, and Brandtech will bring together complementary strengths to support clients in deploying AI in marketing at scale:
- BCG will provide strategic guidance, operating model transformation, and change management to support scaled AI implementation across marketing functions.
- Pencil, the technology platform, will serve as the creative GenAI engine, enabling data-driven content generation, testing, and optimization in real time.
- Brandtech will, as and when required, deliver the technology infrastructure and creative automation needed to integrate AI tools into marketing operations.
Through this collaboration, brands will benefit from a deeper integration model tailored to their specific organizational and marketing needs.
Media Contact:
Eric Gregoire
gregoire.eric@bcg.com
About Boston Consulting Group
Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders—empowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.
Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.
About Pencil
Pencil uses AI to make ads. Our mission is to make AI the default in advertising without replacing creative people. Why the default? Because AI ads are 10x faster and cheaper to make, and 2x better performing, than making them without AI.
We’re called Pencil because we believe AI will be a tool for creative people, not a replacement—it may even be as fundamental a tool in the future as the pencil was in the past.
Pencil was founded in 2018 with a team from Google, Facebook, and Uber with backing from Sequoia and Entrepreneur First. We were acquired by The Brandtech Group in 2023 to pursue a shared vision of bringing Gen AI to the Fortune 500.